Santa Maria Sopra Minerva - Burials

Burials

Saint Catherine of Siena is buried here (except her head, which is in the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena). Beyond the sacristy, the room where she died in 1380 was reconstructed here by Antonio Barberini in 1637. This room is the first transplanted interior, and the progenitor of familiar 19th and 20th century museum "period rooms." The frescoes by Antoniazzo Romano that decorated the original walls, however, are now lost.

The famous early Renaissance painter Fra Angelico died in the adjoining convent and was buried in the church. Popes Urban VII, Paul IV and the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII were also buried in the church.

Before the construction of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Minerva was the church in Rome of the Florentines, and therefore it contains numerous tombs of prelates, nobles and citizens coming from that Tuscan city. Curiously, Diotisalvi Neroni, a refugee who had taken part in the plot against Piero de' Medici, was buried here in 1482, and was later joined by other members of the family.

Also buried here are the 13th century canonist Guillaume Durand, the Cardinal-nephew of Pope Nicholas III Latino Malabranca Orsini, Michel Mazarin (Archbishop of Aix) who was the brother of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the Byzantine philosopher George of Trebizond, and two Renaissance theorists and practitioners, Filarete in architecture and Mariano Santo in surgery.